SNP analysis implicates the role of cytosine methylation in introducing consequential mutations in Vibrio cholerae genomes.

Epigenetic modifications play a key role in gene regulation and in recognition of self DNA in bacteria. In-spite of their positive role in cell survival, modifications like cytosine methylation incur a mutational cost. Cytosine methylation, specifically 5-methylcytosine, is prone to hydrolytic deamination which leads to C [->] T and G [->] A transitions. Here, we first study the abundance of mutagenic cytosine methylation target motifs and show that bacteria like Vibrio cholerae might use motif avoidance as a strategy to minimize the mutational effect of deamination of methylated cytosine. Second by performing SNP analysis on whole genome sequence data from Vibrio cholerae patient isolates w